I think it's dumb but they look like they're sandbagging in general. The Carolina game plan was extremely vanilla on both sides.

Well that at least seems plausible. Holding him back for playbook or injury/health reasons are at least plausible. Holding him back for the difference between a late 4th and a late 5th would just be ridiculous beyond reason.

You're dumb. You're witnessing greatness and don't appreciate it.

I think it's mostly just that he's only been with the team for 4 weeks, and the playbook/playcalling sheet is massive. I remember a couple seasons ago reading/hearing that the average OC has about 150 plays on their sheet for a game, but Andy has well over 200. Something around 240, iirc.

And a lot of Andy's plays are situational; 3rd down and long plays, 3rd down and shorts, RZ plays, EZ plays, end-of-the-1st-half plays, end-of-game plays, etc. Just guessing, but I'd believe that DHop just hasn't absorbed all those situational packages yet.

This.

Also Justin Watson basically make both the blocks that allowed Pat to get that long first down run that sealed the game. He doesn't need to lose snaps

Jesus, the Streisand level of hysteria around here would be comical if it wasn’t so tragically ridiculous.

For his production, JWat is on the field far too much. And it's not like he's a reliable pass-catcher. And at the end of the day, he's been in on 484 (63%) snaps this season and yet only caught 18 passes for a measly 218 yds this season, no TDs. And I get it, he's in on a ton of run-blocking plays, and fine, I'd much rather have him run-blocking than DHop, that's a given. But that doesn't explain why he's been in there on obvious passing 3rd downs while Hopkins stands on the sidelines.

Its probably all of those reasons bundled up into one.

Bundlerooski. Bundlearoooski.

Yep. And if you people think Justin Watson will be our #1 WR by snaps when the playoffs start...well I don't know that is just hilarious.

Jwat gets a lot of love on here but he’s really just a system WR. I’d like to believe he gets the route participation because they’re just easing dhop in. But we’ll be better off when he’s on the field way less. He’s fine as a back of the chart stash but hes getting way too many reps for what he is

Dhop and Justin should be flipped on snaps here

I mean yeah but after his first game here he had two straight games of 60-70% snaps. If it's a playbook thing or doesn't make sense for his snaps to go down the longer he's here. I think they're trying to keep him fresh for the playoff run or he has some minor injury they're trying not to make worse.

THat was my thought initially right after we signed Hopkins. I figured it would take at least 6 weeks for DHop to absorb enough of the playbook and get comfortable enough with all the alert/can stuff to be out there for most of the subpackages. But I also thought we'd see a gradual decline in JWat's snaps as Hopkins became more acclimated, but we haven't really seen that yet.

It's a little puzzling/frustrating to me. But, I guess we'll just have to see if it continues over the next 4 weeks or so.

He's the third oldest WR in the league. He's 32. Only Adam Thielen and Keenan Allen are older.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out why he's not getting snaps now. They're saving him for the playoffs.

They need to do the same with Kelce.

It looks like Hopkins is on a limited snap count to save him for the playoffs.